This first monograph from New York-based Young Projects explores a new
approach to spatial design that combines digital and analog methods at
the intersection of exploration and architecture.
This monograph introduces the cutting-edge research and work of Young
Projects, founded by Bryan Young, where materiality, structure, and form
intersect to generate new architectural typologies. The book presents a
selection of the practice's most relevant projects: five innovative
houses completed between 2015 and 2020 as well as less in-depth looks at
other projects that define the practice.
Each house serves as a chapter through which Young Projects' broader
body of work is explored across scales, illustrated through a rich
landscape of drawings, diagrams, renderings, mock-ups, prototypes, and
photography. The through-line connecting all chapters is the studio's
interest in using ambiguity and anomaly to create novel and accessible
spaces, whether for high profile clients like Heidi Klum or a new resort
in St Kitts.
Young Projects seeks to draw users into immersive spatial experiences
that unfold over time, in a manner that is familiar but subtly foreign.
This quality of "allure" is a result of a unique and experimental
approach to materiality and spatial legibility. These are the threads
that tie the work together and have set Young Projects apart as an
emerging practice, as well as inform the larger-scale projects the
studio undertakes as it enters its second decade.
Young Projects' process often begins with simple exercises in making:
form-finding experiments they undertake within their Brooklyn studio.
Material research has included hand-pulling plaster with an irregular
knife, using furniture foam as a casting bed, and forming concrete with
palm stems. These experiments, among many others, mine characteristics
that are not typically associated with conventional architectural
materials and break traditional methodology, allowing for qualities of
randomness and spontaneity to enter the process of making. The studio
finds that letting go of control (at the right moments) produces results
that are often surprising, entirely bespoke, and resist replication.
